


better than none

by smithens



Series: en l'année 1830 [7]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Gossip, Injury, Past Relationship(s), Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 00:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Combeferre tries (pretends) to sleep; Prouvaire and Bahorel talk nearby.





	better than none

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from oilan for Jean Prouvaire/Combeferre, 20. things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear. doesn't quite fit the spirit of the prompt.

"I shall have to learn again how to write," murmured Jean Prouvaire. "How to turn the pages of a book. How to button my waistcoat."

"How to shoot," added Bahorel, and he slung his arm around Jean Prouvaire's shoulder, squeezed. "But it won't be so difficult, now, will it? You've only lost two, and two of the more useless. Eight fingers is better than none, you know."

They were seated upon the floor of Combeferre's bedchamber, leaning against the side of the bed itself. Enjolras, whose condition only seemed to worsen, slept above them; lying on the rug were Feuilly and Joly, asleep, coiled around one another like newborn kittens, gunpowder-sullied coats draped across them as a makeshift counterpane.

It was a little past three o'clock in the morning on the second of August. Bahorel had been present at Combeferre's apartment since supper; Jean Prouvaire and Joly had arrived shortly before midnight. The latter two had brought with them only a little information: they had last seen Courfeyrac several days ago at the barricade of the rue Neuve-Saint-Étienne, Lègle at the Pont de l'Archeveche the same morning, other society members and newfound consociates had come and gone. There was still rioting at the Quais, and so they had not left Joly's apartment since departing the Hôtel de Ville; they had that night gone to Courfeyrac's place first, then Enjolras's, but they had not seen or heard from Enjolras or any of the other commanding society men for several days — 

Enjolras, Bahorel then told them, had been near-death at Combeferre's all along.

At that point Jean Prouvaire had pulled up the sleeve of his coat to reveal his right hand bound in lint and splinted, and the retelling of the impact to his hand and the subsequent impromptu amputation of his fingers two days prior then occupied them for nearly an hour.

By two o'clock Feuilly had settled upon the floor to rest; by half past he and Joly were sound asleep.

Combeferre had been feigning to be the same in his rocking chair for some thirty minutes — at first he had sought to trick himself into slumber, but now he was eavesdropping. 

For several moments he watched, too, saw Jean Prouvaire lay his head upon Bahorel's shoulder, arm held against his self, eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them, Combeferre closed his own.

"Ten is better than eight. One does not count by eight." 

"I thought you counted by six."

Silence.

Then, the sound of someone stirring, followed by a sigh, then —

"Is he waking?"

"Only dreaming. I hope not of me. He hated it."

"I shouldn't like to darn holes in a friend, myself."

"It hurts terribly; I cannot bear it."

"You ought to have seen Enjolras."

"I could not have born that, neither."

Combeferre shifted beneath the towel he had made a blanket, coughed a little unconsciously, and somehow even with his eyes closed was suddenly intimately aware of his friends' eyes upon him.

"I feel," continued Jean Prouvaire, "as though for the first time everything is very real, as though everything I have dreamed of and dreaded is coming alive all at once. And I have been asleep for so much of the past few days, for I have lost a part of me! two parts, but I speak not only of my poor hand; though the ideal has not left us, it is a betrayal which is happening now, isn't it?"

"It has always been alive," replied Bahorel, voice low, serious. "It has always been real. I've seen — well, I'm old, compared to them," — Combeferre thought he might be referring to Feuilly and Joly, perhaps Enjolras, too — "if not to most. But we are not the first to revolt in these times, and we shan't be the last. Enjolras is visionary, you know, Christ, if you'd been on the barricade, before he — "

"Yes, isn't he? I needn't see him fighting with my own eyes, to know it; I have seen him elsewhere, speaking in the streets, listening in cafes, he has clasped my hands and looked into my eyes and I have known, at those moments, his nature. oh! if it were not for Enjolras we all should not still be together, I think. Like you say, you are old. I think the friends of the abased are very new, but it seems there are other little groups that are newer… Was it very hard, for Combeferre, to tend to him? It was very taxing for Joly. I shall be surprised if he wakes before noon."

"He knew what he was doing. The internat has made sure of that."

"You know how I mean."

"By temperament? Yes, I suppose so. Not during, but after. I heard they'd had a row — that Sunday, I think it was."

Combeferre's breath left him.

"Sunday, yes. Yet it is not at all like with Joly and I — "

"So is this the question of the day, Jean Prouvaire? ...I know just as much about them as you."

"Less."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. I may not have been his  _bedfellow_ , but I've eyes and ears, my friend."

"Lover."

The brush of fabric upon fabric; a clunk of something falling to the floor. Combeferre had begun breathing again a moment ago, and it seemed that synchronously his pulse had sped. In the same instant, hindsight told him he could have done with more discretion in his personal matters. He trusted his friends, of course, particularly Jean Prouvaire, and so it was that his friends, knowing him so well as they did, were prone to understanding his thoughts and feelings without being told of them. 

Nevertheless: it seemed to him a great fault that something which he had only very recently understood in himself was known to others so plainly.

"Lovers. Indeed. Funny, too, that our little cotérie is full of men like-minded beyond politics — or like-bodied, one could say."

"It is our souls that are alike… anyhow, Combeferre never looked at me like he looks at Enjolras."

"Shall I pity you?"

"No, I am glad it is over between us, I like him more as my friend. Can one know a brother, biblically?"

The color before Combeferre's eyelids altered — Bahorel had snuffed out the last of the candles.

"Ought he, or can he?"

"Hm," and then, "Oh, Bahorel, my hand aches..."

"Rest, then."

Some moments passed.

Eventually Combeferre opened his eyes, and once he could see in the darkness, found Bahorel looking at him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to post this initially because of how void of context and self-indulgent it is, but, I changed my mind.


End file.
